40.
With regard to Argos, another dispute was started by King Attalus, who charged Nabis with holding by force a city betrayed by the guile of Philocles, while the other defended himself by pointing to his summons by the Argives themselves.
[2]
The king demanded an assembly of the Argives, that this assertion might be proved; the tyrant did not refuse this; but the king said that a free assembly, that would show what the Argives wished, should be made possible, the guards having been withdrawn from the city and no Lacedaemonians intermingled;
[3]
the tyrant refused to withdraw the guard.
[4]
This discussion came to nought. They left the conference, six hundred Cretans having been furnished to the Roman by the tyrant, and a truce for four months made between Nicostratus, praetor of the Achaeans, and the Spartan tyrant.
[5]
Quinctius then set out for Corinth and approached [p. 273]the gate with the Cretan contingent, that it might1 be clear to Philocles, the prefect of the city, that the tyrant had deserted Philip.
[6]
Philocles also held a conference with the Roman commander, and to the suggestion that he at once desert and hand over the city, he returned a reply that hinted delay rather than refusal.
[7]
From Corinth Quinctius crossed to Anticyra; thence he sent his brother to sound the people of the Acarnanes.
[8]
Attalus went from Argos to Sicyon. There the city, for its part, added new distinctions to the king's former honours, while he, in addition to the fact that he had once redeemed for them the sacred precinct of Apollo at a high price, at this time also,
[9]
not to pass by an allied and friendly city without some act of generosity, gave them as a present ten talents of silver and ten thousand medimni of grain; and so he returned to his fleet at Cenchreae.
[10]
And Nabis, strengthening the garrison at Argos and returning to Sparta, even as he had despoiled the men, sent his wife to rob the women.
[11]
She invited now prominent individuals, now groups of women related to one another, and partly by flattery, partly by threats, took from them not only their money but finally even their raiment and their whole feminine adornment as well.
1 B.C. 197
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